


Weight Within

by mrsvc



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Ghost portals, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Paranormal, Sibling Incest, Supernatural Elements, Twin AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-08
Updated: 2015-02-08
Packaged: 2018-03-11 03:46:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3312719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsvc/pseuds/mrsvc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cam can see ghosts. So can Matt, but he's better at lying about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weight Within

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andromeda_reinvented](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andromeda_reinvented/gifts).



> This was written for Andromeda_Reinvented's birthday many moons ago and has languished in my Google Docs ever since. This morning, she asked me to post it and I just cannot seem to say no to her, not that I ever want a reason to do so. 
> 
> Unbeta'd.

I felt the Lord in my father's house.  
Well, I could see, I could see.  
Standing, we were seventeen. Make it clean.  
 _I am the living ghost of what you need._  
I am everything eternally.  
You will see.  
\- Shake It Out, Manchester Orchestra 

\------

The bus is late.

Matt's amusing himself by blowing his breath out in great puffs, waving a gloved hand through the mist, and laughing when he tips his head too far back and the winter sun gets in his eyes.

Cam is not amused. He's six years old and very cold and he feels like these two things should not happen unless there is snow on the ground to make up for it. Instead, he's waiting at the bus stop to go to school and his twin brother is not paying the appropriate amount of attention to him. He fidgets with his scarf, his hat, the Velcro on his boots, and huffs his displeasure at the world.

"I don't wanna go," he whines. Matt is usually on his side in this matter, right up until they get outside. For being twin brothers, they don't look all the much alike - Matt's taller, Cam's face is rounder - and they certainly don't act alike. Matt always wants to boss Cam around. Sometimes, that's okay, because Matty is Cam's favorite person in the whole world and he wants to do things that make Matt happy. But sometimes, Matt's just being mean and bosses Cam around because he's shellfish.

(Cam knows the word is 'selfish' but his mom laughs so much when he says it wrong, he keeps doing it.)

Cam wouldn't trade Matty for anything, though. Mom says that they are fraternal twins. Cammy has no idea if that's a good thing or a bad one; he's just glad he's Matt's anything.

"Momma says you have to." Matt tips his head to the right and grins. "We could run away, though."

"Run away?" Cam shivers in his coat at the thought. He likes his bed, and the room he shares with Matt, and his Mom's chicken noodle soup. "But-"

"Come on, Cammy. You scared? Cammy is a scaredy cat. Cammy is a scaredy cat."

Cam claps his hands over his ears, his face turning bright red and burning. "Am not. Am not."

"Scaredy cats want to stay home with their Mommas and not go to school."

"Matty!" Cam sobs, feeling the hot prickle of tears stinging on his eyes. His heart is beating too hard and his hands hurt from where he is gripping at the flaps of his hat.

"Scaredy cats are too chicken to run away from their Mommas!"

"Matty, please!"

Matt laughs, high and bright, victorious in his taunting. He takes a couple steps backwards, off the sidewalk and into the grass, when Cam decides to start swatting at him. Ripping a few of Matty's blonde hairs out of his head - the only thing the boys share, at least on the outside - would make him stop, Cam decides.

Cam doesn't know what it is that makes him stop attacking his brother, but he sees the man waving to him out of the corner of his eye. He takes a step back, closer to the curb than the street, and feels the hair on the back of his neck raise when the bus screeches to a halt just a half an inch behind his head.

"What in the Sam Hill were you doing in the street, kid?" the bus driver yells, barreling down the stairs to grab Cam and Matt by the arms and drag them back to the sidewalk.

Cam turns around to look for the man - the one who had been waving at him - and when he finds him gone, he bursts out in tears again.

The bus was late and Cam almost died.

\------

"But I swear, Mom! She was right there. Cammy saw her too! Cammy. Tell her." Matt whips around from his perch in the front seat.

Their mom had just let them start riding in the front seat. They weighed enough - at least according to the commercials Cam saw on TV - but their mom kept telling them they were too short for the airbags. It was like adding insult to injury, as far as the boys were concerned, and when the local rec leagues told them they were too small to move up an age group for their hockey teams, Mom had taken pity on them and let them make their own rotation on who got to sit up front. Matty had drawn the short straw so he got the morning trip to school, while Cam got the afternoons.

"I'm not up for your stories today, Matthew."

"They're not-" Matt breaks off into a harsh groan. "They're not stories, Mom! God!"

"Do not," their mother said emphatically, taking one hand off the wheel to point at her son. "Do not take the Lord's name in vain, Matthew. If you are going to speak of God, use a tone of reverence, not disgust."

"I wouldn't have to if you just believed us!"

"Baby-"

"He's not lying. She was there," Cam breaks in.

"Cameron. Enough. It's bad enough to hear them from Matt, but now he's got you in it?"

Matt's forehead thunks dramatically against the glass of the passenger seat. His arms are too long for his body and he has them folded up against his chest awkwardly, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low so that Cam can just make out the edge of Matt's jaw from under the shadows.

Their mom pulls into the turnaround in front of the school, her hands still tightly gripped around the steering wheel. She puts the car in park, throwing her hazard lights on, and turns in the seat.

"Do the boys at school tell you these things? The boys on the team? Do they tell you to...lie to us?"

Matt scowls. He opens his mouth, a dark look in his eyes, but Cam shoots his hand out to grip his brother's forearm and stops him from saying anything stupid.

"No, Mom."

"So where do you get this from? Does your father let you watch scary movies when I'm not home?"

"Mom, we're twelve. Scary movies aren't even scary anymore," Matt snorts. Cam shivers a little when he remembers the things he and Matt have seen that were worse than any movie; the things that crept in and plucked at their toes when their father would shout at them for wasting electricity and turn off their bedside lamp. The shadows that would dance along to the radio when they were trying to do their homework. The voices that would make them jumpy, drowning out everything else and cause their mother to snap at them for not listening.

"Then why? Why do you keep- Stop. Just stop."

Cam gets cold all down his middle. He was the one who told Matt that they should tell Mom, that she would understand, that maybe she could help them. Cam thought maybe their Mom would pray with him and Matt and help the Others go away.

"Stop seeing them? Or just stop telling you about them?" He also doesn't recognize his own voice there and it's only when Matt's fingers find his own that he realizes he's shaking.

His mom turns back to the windshield, unlocks the passenger doors, and says, "have a good day at school. I'll be here at 3pm to pick you up."

Cam wants to fight, to scream, to throw himself down at his mother's feet and beg for her to listen. Instead, he looks up at Matt, takes in the blank stare of determination there, and gets out of the car.

Matt holds out his hand as their mom drives away. Cam takes it, wraps his fingers around Matt's rough skin, and stands so that his coat hides them away from prying eyes.

When their mom takes a right out of the school parking lot, she doesn't even hesitate and drives right through a little girl in a plaid jumper who dissipates in thin air as the car hits her.

\-----

"Come on, Cammy. Come on. Time for our prayers."

Matty slides his hands around Cam's neck, rubs his fingertips in soothing circles against his brother's skin.

"Can I pray that God would take calculus away?"

Matt laughs, leans down to kiss the nest of curls that Cam lets grow far too long now-a-days. The boys on the team make jokes about dirty flow, but Matt just tells him he looks like a mop dipped in a bucket of grease and yeah, he's probably due a haircut.

"I don't think He's willing to do that, but you can try, bud." He bends over Cam's shoulder to close the books and shut off the light that sits on their desk.

When they were kids, Cam used to lay in bed in the dark and cry. Big, fat tears would soak into his pillowcase. Every morning, he would flip his pillow and hope they would dry before his mom came in to check if they had made their beds. It was then - when he was too young to know better - that he used to pray for God to take the Others away. He used to beg, over and over again, for angels to guard him while he slept. It didn't matter how many times he asked, though, because the voices never stopped. When he woke up, the shadow on his wall still waved at him. When he went past the middle school, the little girl in the plaid jumper was still standing in the middle of road and he had to teach himself not to flinch as he drove through her.

Matt helps, because Matt waves back. He asks the voices questions and listen to see if they were real or just echoes. Matt grips Cam's thigh whenever he was in the driver's seat as the little girl vanished. Matt helps because sees them too.

Matt pulls him by his hands to the rug they had bought just for this. It was small and round, soft enough to cushion their knees as they settled in. They kneel facing each other, and Matt curls their hands up between them in a complicated knot.

"I bind to myself today. God's Power to guide me. God's Might to uphold me. God's Wisdom to teach me. God's Eye to watch over me. God's Ear to hear me.  
God's Word to give me speech. God's Hand to guide me. God's Way to lie before me. God's Shield to shelter me..." Matt says. Their familiar prayer of protection. They had found it in a book at the library and had been using it ever since.

The fact that God had never come to Cam's aid to rid him of the voices did not mean that Cam had stopped believing. The very presence of the ghosts and spirits around him solidified his belief that there was something greater than him out there, on another plane, in a dimension that Cam gets glimpses of through the shadows on his wall. All it meant to Cam was that he had to change what he was asking from God.

Now he asks for guidance and wisdom, instead of refuge and shelter.

Matt's voice is steady and sure, the words a comfortable weight in Cam's head, and Matt's firm grip Cam's only anchor outside of his own head.

"I ask Cameron Atkinson-Calvert to be signed, sealed, and protected by God's presence, so that nothing can get through to hurt him, in Jesus' name."

Matt takes one his hands loose from Cam's and draws the sign of the cross on his forehead.

"I sign Cameron Atkinson-Calvert with the sign of the cross. Seal and cover him with the blood of Jesus. Surround him with God's glory, light, and presence, so nothing can get through to hurt him. In Jesus' name, amen."

Matt leans forward and presses his lips to the center of Cam's brow. The ritual did not call for it not require it, but it had been a habit of theirs since they were fifteen and had first knelt at the side of their twin beds without their Mom beside them.

Cam's own hand shakes when he draws his sign on Matt.

"I ask Matthew Atkinson-Calvert to be signed, sealed, and protected by God's presence, so that nothing can get through to hurt him, in Jesus' name.

"I sign Matthew Atkinson-Calvert with the sign of the cross. Seal and cover him with the blood of Jesus. Surround him with God's glory, light, and presence, so nothing can get through to hurt him. In Jesus' name, amen."

The last part they say together, two crackly teenaged voices whispering into the darkness of their bedroom, foreheads pressed together and breath mingling in the chill of the night.

"Christ with me. Christ before me. Christ behind me. Christ within me. Christ beneath me. Christ above me. Christ at my right and Christ at my left. Amen."

With the last word lost in the silence of their family's home, Cam expects Matt to pull away, to pull him up and push him into his bed, and tell him to sleep. That's what he usually does.

Instead, his brother pulls him closer, lets their noses bump against each other, and shuts his eyes tightly. "There have to be other kids like us."

Cam whines a little in the back of his throat, tilts his head to the side a little, and shuts his eyes too. There couldn't possibly be anyone else like them.

"Do you think?"

"There've got to be. Who wrote those prayers to begin with if there weren't?"

Cam can feel his brother's lips move against his own as he speaks and knows, for certain, there is no one else exactly like them.

"Well, none of those kids ever had a Matthew, did they?"

Matt pulls back, just a little, just enough to open his eyes and sneak a hand up to cup Cam's jaw. Cam resists swaying back against him, resists the gravity that makes him want to fall back into his brother's embrace.

"You can tell them all how lucky they are when we find them," Matt says, self-deprecating and charming, and Cam has never loved another person in any universe as he loves his brother.

Crawling into their separate beds, Cam notices the buzz of being held by Matt has faded away and the voices start again - slowly, as if they had to break down an invisible barrier to get to him again, and Cam falls asleep with the moon on his face and Matt's hand just an arm's length away from his.

\-----

"You don't want to believe us, that's fine. You want us to block it all out? Okay. You want to tell us to suppress it, to not look back when they look at us. Whatever. I don't care anymore. But I'll be dead and buried before I let you do this."

"Matthew-" his mother starts, hands held out in a placating manner. Cam curls in on himself, sitting on the stairwell of his childhood home. He should not be letting Matt fight his battles for him, but that's what his brother has always done. He's always risen to Cam's protection, like a white knight on a spiritual battlefield, armed with the shield of faith and the sword of truth.

"You are not putting Cam on medication. You are not sending him away."

"I think you overstep your boundaries, son." Cam winces a little when their father cuts in. It's the wrong thing to say and he can hear Matt suck in an angry breath.

"What boundaries are those? Cam is mine. He's always been mine. Mine to protect. When have either of you ever done that? When have either of you ever stopped to listen to him? To me?"

"The school is worried, Matty." His mother's tone is thin, weak and watery. She must be crying. "They want him properly evaluated and treated-"

"They want him locked up in a fucking facility!"

"You watch your language, mister."

"Fuck you. Cam saved that kid's life today because he listens. Maybe if everyone else did, we'd all be better off."

Cam thinks back to the school cafeteria. He had been standing in line when he caught sight of her. She was in a long, blue velveteen dress, like something from a Victorian play, with black hair and green eyes. She was standing behind the lunch counter, plain as day, and Cam had stared at her. She pointed to the girl in front of Cam in life and whispered "no." Cam tried to ignore her, but she grew more firm, more insistent. Cam's fear gave her more energy, and she was shouting "no" so loudly, Cam was surprised no one else could hear her.

The shouting grew so bad, Cam had wanted to drop his tray and run. It had been that impulse that gave him the idea. He smacked his hand against the girl's tray, tipping it over and dumping everything on the floor.

"Hey, spaz! What the hell?" she had shouted.

"You can't eat that."

"Well, yeah, no. It's all over the floor now."

"No, no, it's dangerous."

The lunch ladies had converged on the two of them, listening to the girl shout loudly about how she had "already paid for it and everything!"

"Come on, honey, what'd you have on there? We'll credit you for it."

The girl rattled off the food, wiping at invisible stains on her baby pink sweater. "And two sugar cookies, too. The last two. Thanks." She threw the last word snidely over her shoulder.

"Honey, weren't no sugar cookies to be had. Peanut butter was what we put out."

"That's impossible. You always serve sugar cookies on Wednesdays. I know because I'm allergic to peanuts. I can't eat the cookies any other day because they've all got nuts."

Cam had stood rooted in the spot while the blood drained from all their faces at the realization. His seemingly by-chance heroism didn't save him from a detention, nor did it save him from getting the third degree from the principle and the school shrink.

It had been the shrink who had called his parents, especially after Cam had given up trying to be evasive and had made a sarcastic remark about seeing the old headmistress.

His heart had sunk when the door had opened and in rushed his parents, instead of his brother. They had refused to call Matt out of class, no matter how Cam had begged.

"We're not discussing this with you," his father said firmly. "You are seventeen years old. You are our son, and so is Cam. We will do with him-"

"You'll do nothing to him so long as I'm here-"

"-As we see fit as his parents." His father voice had grown louder to drown out Matt's protestations. The arguing started again, louder, with all three of them shouting in unison. The voices - the other voices - began to buzz, hissing and crying, and Cam knows that Matt can hear them but he's not listening right now.

"If you're going to put him in a nuthouse, you might as well send me too. You know I see them and hear them just as much as he does."

"You cope so much better with them," says his mom. It's the straw that breaks the camel's back, for Cam at least, and he tears up the stairs. He knows they can all hear him because all the voices stop at once.

He rips his suitcase down for the closet shelf and starts throwing in clothes, half from his dresser and half from Matty's, his vision swimming. He hears the door open behind him but refuses to acknowledge it.

"Cammy. Baby." It's Matt, his Matt, and Cam lets the tears fall unchecked.

He turns around, shoulders squared, and says, "wanna run away?"

Matt slams into him in a full body hug. He's slightly sweaty from earlier, his skin a burnished pink from the shouting match, and Cam can feel the hammering of his heart through his chest and against the side of his face where he's tucked into all the curves and grooves of his brother's body.

"Where would we go?"

Cam chews on his lip a little. "Wherever they lead us to go," is what he says, trusting Matty to understand him.

"And what would we do?"

"Find other kids like us."

Matt smiles, a gesture that Cam feels more than sees because Matt's lips are pressed to his forehead. "There's a bus that leaves in fifteen minutes. Think we can make it?"

Cam pulls away, lets Matt dry his tears with his t-shirt, and goes to close the latches on their suitcase.

"It wouldn't be running away if there wasn't any running involved."

They sneak down the stairs and out the door, stopping to hear their parents still whispering in stilted, angry voices to each other.

"This bus better not be late," Matt complains behind his sunglasses. It was unseasonably warm and bright to be fall and Matt doesn't grin when he tips his head back and gets blinded by the sun. "They'll catch us if it is."

The bus isn't late and, when it pulls away from the curb, the old man waving at Cam is still there.

Matt and Cam wave back.


End file.
